Saloua Berdai Chaouni
Area of work:
Gerontology, education, research,
Specific field of expertise:
Older migrants, inclusive and equitable care, dementia, informal care, racism, decolonial participatory action research
Type of work:
A transdisciplinary academic grounded in society, valuing lived experience - especially of marginalised communities - and committed to advancing social change through knowledge creation and sharing.
What does ENIEC mean to you or your work?:
ENIEC means a sustainable network with inspirational and warm people.
More about Saloua
I am a transdisciplinary academic with a background in biomedical sciences, gerontology, and management. My work connects the biomedical, social, and cultural dimensions of health and care. Across my career, research has never been an isolated academic exercise, it has always grown from and returned to the communities, organisations, and people at its heart.
My engagement with ageing and migration started in 2004, and since then I have been part of pioneering work at the intersection of ageing, care, and ethnic diversity in Belgium and across Europe. Over the years, I have worked across research, policy, and practice, contributing to research, policy development, organisational, and social change. This has led to publications and practical tools such as the Gids voor interculturele ouderenzorg (2008), still an inspiration for many care organisations in their pathway towards inclusive and responsive care for older migrants.
My focus the last decade was on capturing the nuanced experience of dementia and dementia care among older migrants and their caregivers. This has led to the development of my model on equitable responsive dementia care and an intersectional responsive reminiscence approach that places cultural heritage as a source of care. A podcast created together with family and formal caregivers brings these insights to life beyond academia, offering inspiration to those doing this work every day. You find the podcast here!
My current work focuses on inclusive ageing care, and the decoloniality of care and research, with a particular focus on the embodied health effects of racism on racialised ageing women. I work with participatory and decolonial approaches that centre lived experience and community knowledge, approaches in which communities are not objects of study but co-producers of knowledge and change.
I have been part of the ENIEC since 2012. I co-organised the 2013 Annual Meeting in Brussels and contributed to the Vision Group (2015–2016), where we reflected on ENIEC’s first decade and helped shape its future, emphasising the importance of valuing the network’s collective strengths, what we came to call “the power of the network.”
Over the years, ENIEC has been an important space for me to engage critically with topics around older migrants, and to build meaningful collaborations, some of which have grown into friendships. I co-edited the booklet From Home to Home: Guided by Older Migrants in Europe for ENIEC’s 10th anniversary. A publication that embodies the spirit of the network: knowledge built together, for and with the people it concerns. I am currently part of the organising committee for the upcoming Annual Meeting in Belgium, celebrating ENIEC's 20th anniversary, something I very much look forward to as a moment of collective reflection and renewed connection. Hope to see you there!
